Less than 50% of Nigerian developers are satisfied with their jobs – survey (Devcenter)

In an article for the guardian newspapers, big chief Victor Asemota noted that, “There is no ‘abroad’ in technology. Standards are global. You either meet or surpass them or you fall below.” Let me state that I totally agree with this, and more importantly, that a lot of Nigerian developers meet or surpass these standards. Maybe not all, but a lot.

Little wonder there’s a spotlight which is now being shone on our developer community. The fact that we have good developers is well known, but there are a host of other things that are not. Are these developers happy? Do they love their job? What kind of programming language is most used? And many more. The African nature of not keeping accurate data might have hidden answers to these questions, but then……

It is why we have Devcenter. Devcenter is a platform that matches remote teams to software projects. The company builds world class products, together with technology and top talent from a network of developers and designers in Africa.

Devcenter logo

Annually, this developer community sends surveys to Nigerian developers in the tech ecosystem. The survey after collation, reveals interesting data about the tech industry in Nigeria. An infographic which was designed from the survey’s results, addresses as many questions you’ll need answers to. It also provides information ranging from the most popular programming language among developers, their income level to their plans for the future of work. Note: This is for 2017.

See below:

Devcenter state of code 2017

Gender

In Nigeria, there are more male developers than female, with the latter grabbing 94% of share. This translates that out of every 100 developers, only 6 would be females.

This is a pretty large gender gap, which in my opinion, should be addressed. Maybe coding schools should give special consideration to female applications or organize female focused events to bridge this gap.

Age

55% of developers are between 18 and 24 years old. It would be safe to also say these lots are mostly students of tertiary institutions, where they have access to laptops, free internet (in some schools), and have the freedom to learn whatever they want to.

Learning mode

Well, in a country where I’ve come in contact with computer science students who decried the focus of universities on just the ‘theory’s aspect of everything, it is only normal for them to teach themselves, and a whole 84% have done that successfully. 9% learnt from tertiary institutions, while 5% from computer schools.

Earnings & Satisfaction

Nigerian developers earn far less than their counterparts in other countries, even if there was a rise in the amount earned in 2017 versus 2016. There is still a long way to go though. Even as many of them say they aren’t satisfied with their job, with higher pay and career growth top of what would give them satisfaction. You don’t expect them to be satisfied with <$500 per month, do you?

Work habit

A majority of developers work in offices, while 32% are working a bit of both in the office and remotely. Also, a whopping 79% are planning to work remotely. Now this leads me to the question if Nigerian developers prefer a coworking space as to working alone. I think they prefer the latter, but we’ll be taking a developer’s view soon.

Finally, it is very applaudable for Devcenter to have collated such statistics. It’ll definitely help the ecosystem in making several decisions as per developers, making amends where necessary and know what exactly to address. More companies need to follow this step and collate such data from their market.